Caleb Everett

On his book Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures

Cover Interview of June 20, 2017

In a nutshell

Numbers, words and other symbols for precise quantities,
are a human invention that had a broad impact on our cognitive and behavioral
lives. This claim is based on extensive findings obtained by many researchers
across a host of fields including linguistics, psychology, and archaeology.
Through a novel synthesis of these findings, Numbers
and the Making of Us shows that the invention and refinement of
numbers across cultures had a profound impact on the human condition.

A key point underscored in the experimental data surveyed is
the following: While even at birth humans have some abilities to differentiate
quantities, these abilities are very limited until we are taught number words
and counting. We seem to have a native ability to discriminate small quantities
from each other, say two from three items. We also have a native ability to
discriminate large quantities from each other if they differ in marked ways. We
can differentiate, for instance, four from twelve items even at birth.

Surprisingly, perhaps, we require numbers to build upon
these basic quantity differentiation skills. Numbers are the conceptual
scaffolding that allows us to construct uniquely human quantitative thought. In
the book, this point is supported with data from prenumeric children, anumeric
adults in places like Amazonia, and members of other species.

So how do humans arrive at numbers if we do not just “grow”
into the recognition that, for instance, eight items can be consistently and
precisely distinguished from nine items? How were numbers ever invented?

Through the examination of linguistic data across cultures,
the book highlights a simple point: Numbers are typically invented after people
come to recognize correspondences between the fingers on their hands and other
items in their natural environment.

This manual route to numbers is not the only one cultures
may take, but it is the most common route. As people come to recognize, in a
haphazard and inconsistent manner, that a “hand” of something can refer to a
specific quantity (five) of that something, they verbally reify numerical
concepts. These verbal numbers can then be passed to others, refined, and built
upon. The subsequent construction of more elaborate numerical concepts is
essential to the development of other impactful cultural practices like
agriculture and writing. In other words, the book suggests that the cognitive
tools called numbers helped lead to a reshaping of the lives of most humans.

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011